


Out of Focus [with picture]

by thefilthiestpiglet



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: HYDRA Trash Party, M/M, Past Rape/Non-con, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-25 16:35:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4968268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefilthiestpiglet/pseuds/thefilthiestpiglet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky asks Steve to draw an image in his head as a way of dealing with dissociation.</p><p>The resulting image depicts a rape/noncon scenario.</p><p> </p><p>(I decided to also draw Steve's sketch. :))</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky asks Steve to draw a picture. Specific prompt in the endnotes to avoid spoilers. :)

"I have a picture in my head." Bucky said that night, as he was washing the dishes after dinner. Steve was hardly surprised -- Bucky had been spacey since he woke up this morning, and had barely spoken 10 words all day. That's usually a sign that a specific mental image was haunting his brain. As Bucky had explained, images would sometimes appear in his head, without any context or meaning. Usually they disappeared as quickly as they came, but some stuck around so long that he couldn't really process anything else while it's there.

So Steve got out his sketchpad and they sat down together on the couch. When Bucky got like this, the best method they've found was to get the image out of Bucky's brain as best as possible -- then Bucky could stop remembering it and start seeing it.

"It's a dark room, and there is a big pane of glass on one side. There is a man on the other side of the glass. He is lying on the floor." Steve hurried to outline the room and the figure as words tumbled out of Bucky. Once the drawing session started, Bucky'd enter a dissociated state where he'd describe his mental image in a flood of dispassionate details: shapes, colors, values. Often Bucky didn't know what he was describing until he'd fully excised the image from his mind.

And so they were always surprises, to both Steve and Bucky. One turned out to be a sniper's view of the Kennedy assassination. Another was of an airfield in the Philippines. Those, after some discussion with Bucky, were turned over to Pepper for analysis and safe keeping. Others, Bucky kept in his room -- the image of Becca in the Barnes' kitchen at age 5, with raspberry jam smeared on her face, for example. Steve didn't know what happened with the image that turned out to be Steve himself with his arm outstretched from the train in the Alps, but he didn't particularly want to know. When he'd snapped out of his dispassionate description phase and saw the image on Steve's sketchbook, Bucky had gone pale. He'd ran his fingers along the tear smudge lines that Steve'd tried to cover up with his crosshatching, and that was when Steve left to go take a shower. By the time Steve got back, the sketch had disappeared and Bucky was there with a soft smile and a warm hug.

"There is light coming from the bottom of the door here. There is a slot. 3 inches by 10 inches." Bucky reached out and pointed to the spot on the dismal cell taking shape on the page -- a stark room with no opening to the exterior, except for the door. The dim outline of a florescent light on the ceiling that remained off. And Bucky was looking through some sort of window or glass into this room. Nothing on the floor except the man. 

Steve couldn't help wondering, who was this man? Why is this image etched in Bucky's brain? This was when Bucky turned his attention to describing the man on the floor, and Steve's sense of unease grew as his hand obediently sketched out every description and correction. The man was naked, lying on his side, with his rear end exposed toward Bucky. His body was curled in on himself and he was looking Bucky in the eye. The man's body was covered in various bruises, which Bucky pointed out in unfailing detail. Whip marks down his back, bloody bruise lines from cuffs about his ankles and wrists, rope burns around his neck, and blood dripping down his thigh. 

"No, not just blood. Also something more translucent. Semen" Bucky's finger traced lines down the man's thigh that Steve dutifully followed with a pencil and eraser. In times like these Steve tried to focus on the artistic challenge of portraying translucency with graphite. It distracted Steve from the greater ramifications of the image taking shape on his sketchpad. The distraction unfortunately didn't last long, as Bucky pointed to the man's rear end and the center of the scene of violation. "And this was more swollen and open, with more sperm and blood spilling out. 3 oz or so." 

Steve tried his best to keep calm. Certainly, he's seen and heard of worse. But there was something especially distressing about drawing the aftermath of what was clearly a brutal rape of a prisoner while listening to Bucky's calm descriptions. Had Bucky been complicit in what was done to this poor man? And was Steve also complicit in a way, through his drawing of this scene? Right now Bucky was unable to process the implications of the image, but what would he think when he snapped out of his fugue state? 

By now Bucky had moved onto describing the man's face, and Steve found himself sharpening lines and bringing his features into focus. Lips swollen and similarly smeared with semen and marked with the bloody imprints of some metal gag. A chin with a tiny cleft, sharp cheekbones marked by yet another bruise, a delicate but firm jawline, and blank, unseeing eyes, directed straight at the viewer.

Steve recoiled in horror when he leaned back from adding some additional shading to the deep-set eyes. It took all of his self control to not immediately smudge the drawing beyond recognition.

The man was Bucky. Bucky had been describing an image of himself all along, seen through some dim mirror on one side of the cell. 

"And he had some stubble on his face, around here..." Bucky moved to point, completely unaware of anything else except the clarity of the image in his mind. Steve reached out and grabbed his hand. Bucky looked up at Steve, perplexed but unguarded, eyes distant. Steve had never tried to stop Bucky in this state before. Even when Steve found himself drawing the fall from the train from Bucky's perspective, he'd managed to keep his tears to himself and complete the task at hand. But this time...

"Bucky," Steve said softly, words failing to come as he struggled to breathe from the emotions flooding his chest. He shouldn't... he's probably already broken 15 different therapist recommendations and set Bucky back months of recovery, but he needed to... he wanted to know, right now, "The picture... Is that...?"

And it was probably because of the state that Bucky was still caught in, but he merely quirked his head at Steve and studied the image briefly. "The man. He just gave up and decided to stop existing."

Steve heard something snap. It was probably his heart.

\--------

And here's the picture as Steve was drawing it! (Please imagine with superior Steve art skills)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a [HTP prompt](http://hydratrashmeme.dreamwidth.org/1634.html?thread=3112290#cmt3112290) that was basically: Bucky directs Steve to draw a picture of him as "the Winter Soldier, curled up in his cell, with blood on his hands, and blood and come slicking his thighs." All Bucky remembers is the image, and not its significance, and so Steve is playing the sketch artist to help Bucky, and dealing with the ramifications of drawing this.
> 
> I... I have conflicting feelings about Steve's portrayal here, since one of my personal pet peeves is "Cinnamon Roll Steve constantly surprised by Bucky's Trauma." But the story kind of requires it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky is happy to get the image out of his head.

Finally, the picture was out of his head. Bucky closed his eyes and rested his head against the back of the couch. With the weight of the image gone, he can finally think again -- process the events of the day properly. Steve had made a particularly nice dinner that night that Bucky should really thank him for. And he was pretty sure he'd rejected Steve's overtures in bed this morning, so now that his head's clear again, he should really make it up to Steve tonight....

Bucky leaned over to nuzzle in Steve's shoulder, and found it stiff and unyielding. 

Bucky sat up instantly. Steve sat stiffly beside him, fists clenched and resting on his thighs, right hand holding a pencil that he'd snapped. For Steve to be like this -- whatever was in his head was Very Bad. Another victim of assassination? Maybe it's the look on Howard's face when.... 

Then Bucky caught sight of the sketch that was laid carefully on the coffee table. It wasn't a victim, it was him. Bucky shivered as the memories came back. It was *that* moment. He'd forgotten until now, but...

"You said this was the moment when you decided to stop existing." Steve said quietly beside him. "When you gave up."

Bucky swallowed. That was true, but also much more complicated. And even though half of it was lost in the mess of his memory, this was something that Steve needed to understand. Something that he needed Steve to understand.

"This was... early. They'd amputated my arm but were still working on different prototypes. They told me that you were dead, and that everyone thought I was dead, so ... it was just me." Bucky gently touched all his bruises in the picture. Funny how he didn't remember any of that part. "This... this stuff wasn't particularly new. I'd long gotten used to the everyday torture stuff, and it always healed. They'd keep me in the dark for a couple of days, then pull me out and the torture happened again." He chuckled. "I was like Prometheus -- stuck on the rock -- couldn't do anything about the vulture, but it couldn't exactly kill me, either."

Bucky picked up the sketch and leaned in to Steve, actively pushing into him and feeling him loosen a bit. "But this one time... they threw me in like usual but forgot to close the food latch, so light came in and reflected off the two-way mirror in the back." He didn't even know he was in a converted interrogation room until then, and that he was being watched the entire time. Not that that's hardly surprising. "It was the first time I really saw myself, my whole self since ... well, since London."

“And seeing myself like that... at first I didn't even recognize myself." What had gotten to him the most was the stubble, actually. Bucky had always stayed clean-shaven for as he could remember. "And seeing the actual physical evidence of what they'd been doing to me --- I realized that they weren't going to give up, that even if this current batch of HYDRA got bored or whatever, there'd always be another batch. They're right, you know ... it doesn't do much just to cut off the head of an..." 

"...ideology" Steve said, grimly. Bucky shrugged. He was going to say "institution" but Steve always thought about these things differently. And at least this showed that Steve was thinking about what he was saying.

"So when I saw myself like that ... I knew that I couldn't win. That even if I kept fighting and refused their demands until I died, that's still not winning. No matter what, I wasn't going to see my family again, or really do anything else Bucky Barnes would normally do. As far as anyone was concerned, Bucky Barnes was dead." Bucky could feel Steve trembling from emotion beside him, but he kept going.

"In fact, the only person who still cared that I was still Bucky was me, and at that moment, I didn't care very much." Bucky shrugged. "So I decided to stop. It was easier that way, to give up the stuff that was important to Bucky that wasn't doing me or anyone else a jot of good. For all this time, I'd been clinging to my name, my serial number, but the man in the mirror wasn't Bucky Barnes. I didn't even know it until I saw myself in that reflection, but I'd stopped being Bucky somewhere in the middle of all that had happened." Bucky remembered the clarity of that decision, the relief and calm that came from realizing that Bucky Barnes didn't matter anymore.

Steve caught him in a tight hug and Bucky almost laughed. Steve could be such a sap sometimes. He responded by pressing reassuringly into the embrace. "It's all right, Steve. *You* remembered Bucky Barnes. And when you did... suddenly it started mattering again." Bucky thought back to the helicarrier, how Steve was willing to die to remind him who he was. "Sure, I gave up on Bucky, but you didn't."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a lot of feelings about Bucky's identity and how much of it is self perception and how much of it is an attempt to meet others' perception of him. Especially Steve.

**Author's Note:**

> Anyways, I'm on [tumblr](http://thefilthiestpiglet.tumblr.com), and the images are also on [this tumblr post]() if you're interested.


End file.
